In 2011, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak promised that Malaysia would never censor the Internet. Speaking at the first Malaysian—ASEAN Regional Bloggers Conference, Najib said: “I have no doubts whatsoever that Malaysia has one of the liveliest blogospheres in the world. And definitely one of the freest if not the most free…[former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad] made the promise to the world that Malaysia would never censor the Internet. My government is fully committed to that wisdom. We intend to keep his word.”

Four years later, beleaguered by allegations that $700 million in funds were suspiciously transferred from a Malaysian state investment fund into his personal bank account, Najib went back on that promise.

Back in the fall of 2011, some undergraduates at Yale created a cool class project. As part of their law and technology class, Bay Gross and Charlie Croom built a website and game that allowed Facebook users to discover how many of their “friends” they really know. The site, still available at whatsherface-book.com, asked people to reflect upon how much personal information they share with strangers or distant acquaintances. This June, Facebook sent Gross a message claiming that the site infringed its trademark and demanding it be taken down. EFF has responded on behalf of Gross.

Visa and MasterCard confirmed that they have cut off payment services for Backpage.com, an online platform for people to advertise goods and services. This was in response to public pressure from Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who wrote to executives at both of the payment processors urging them to cut off transactions to Backpage’s adult services. The two companies responded by quickly shutting down payments for the entire site.

EFF has long condemned the Vietnamese government's crackdown on bloggers, including the imprisonment of high-profile blogger and activist Le Quoc Quan. Our support for freedom of expression in Vietnam has even earned us the attention of the Vietnamese government, which attempted to compromise our employees' computers by sending them links to malware. We are pleased to anticipate Quan's imminent release from prison on June 27, though we are sad to note that Quan owes his release not to a change of heart on the part of the Vietnamese government, but the fact that he has served the full term of his 30-month prison sentence related to politically-motivated charges of tax evasion.